


Like Gods and Goddesses Choose

by hiddencait



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Creation Myth, F/M, Sibling Incest, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like the goddesses of old, Gretel finds there is only one man who could ever be her equal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Gods and Goddesses Choose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelette/gifts).



> This was my first claim for ShipSwap and definitely the hardest to write. The chemistry in the movie was just too insanely obvious to ignore, but incest itself is never easy for me to write. It took a while to write the angle I wanted for this, but I really love how it finally came together.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it too Angelette!
> 
> Also, just a warning - this has not been betaed. My Betacreature Askita has yet to see the movie and really didn't want spoilers!

It began with a story in a book. It wasn’t their story, or at least not the story that a man named Grimm would write about them some time in the future. No, this story was more a chronicle of the history or at least a legend of their mother’s people. Of _their_ people. It was a legacy, one Gretel knew would change everything.

 

The greatest change it wrought, however, was one Gretel never expected.

 

Though she should have; the signs had always been there, lingering in the breath between them.

 

…

 

It was Hansel who brought her the book. Though he still refused to speak about their mother’s true identity and the gift that was slowly awaking in Gretel, Hansel was the one to return to the old house and the cavern below to fetch their mother’s grimoire. It was Hansel who made sure Gretel would have a guide and a teacher whose motives had only ever been the best of those of a mother - to protect and cherish her children.

 

Just as it had been Hansel who hadn’t needed to be told that Gretel feared using the wand she’d taken from Muriel; Hansel who hadn't needed to be told that she’d all but felt the dark deeds it had been used for seeping from the wand into her skin. Hansel, who, mere days after they’d left the gingerbread house behind for the last time, had crafted a wand for his sister out of copper and crystal and oak. A wand that fit her hand as smoothly as the crossbow he’d made for her and the armor he’d insisted she always wear. Hansel, who despite his unease with her awakening gifts, had seen to it that she had another tool to use – another weapon to defend her against the dark covens they faced.

 

But then, it was always Hansel.

 

If Gretel had need of something, _anything,_ for protection or practical matters, for a sounding board or solace, for weaponry or, now, for witchcraft, it was Hansel who found a way to fill that need.

 

The book he brought her held both everything Gretel might have guessed it would contain, and a great deal more she might never have imagined. Within, she found the herb lore and spell diaries she’d glimpsed in the few grimoires of some of she and Hansel’s former bounties that they had recovered as proof of the fiend’s wickedness, not that their wickedness was usually in question by the time the village called the hunters in to deal with the problem.  Her mother’s spells and recipes, of course, were much less gruesome than those others. Some of them anyway – Gretel was bemused to see that for nearly every entry regarding a plant used for healing had a mention of the herb’s other, more deadly uses. There seemed to be little difference between a curing posset and a killing poison, as least not in the crafting of each substance. A mortar and pestle and a bit of heat, and well, a witch could cook up life or death. Her choice.

 

Charms and curses were much the same. A few steps of ritual, a pinch or two of herbs, perhaps a candle or chalice… both white and dark witch needed the same items, same routines, to successfully cast their spells.

 

Even the look of each item was often almost identical. The color of a candle, for instance, mattered a great deal, but the symbolism for the color “red” might mean blood for the practitioners of necromancy or it could represent passion in a charm for a fertile marriage.

 

It was the _intention_ that led to each change from good to ill and back again. Gretel had known that all along, but seeing the truth of it written there on the page in her mother’s handwriting gave that truth a certainty within her. Fears she still hadn’t spoken even to Hansel were eased – the ability to cast spells meant one was a witch. It did not have to mean that she was a monster. Not unless she, herself, decided to be.

 

She would never be a docile little village healer as the lamented Mina had been, of course. Gretel was a hunter, a warrior, and she had been that for far too long to change. Even if she had wanted to change, which she did not.

 

No, Gretel would keep to her role as an executioner with blade and bullet. She was just adding Craft to her arsenal of various deadly skills. Nor would she be the first white witch to have chosen such a path, or so she also learned from her mother’s book. In addition to descriptions of her craft, their mother had written of others born into the line of the white witch who had taken up the martial arts instead of those of the hearth, women of war and vengeance, guardians of the battlefield and often of death itself.

 

Some called themselves angels or spirits. Others were worshipped as goddesses.

 

Sekhmet and Hecate, Kali and the Morrigan, the list of names resonated in Gretel’s mind and forged anew the steel in her spine.

 

But it was the tale of one nameless goddess of creation that somehow felt even more real. That made Gretel feel even more whole, though she hardly dared to admit it.

 

Embossed into the leather of the back cover of the grimoire was the bare impression of the ground and the sky above, with the faint image of two bodies intertwined between the two. Above the image was just a few faint words, but those few near seared Gretel to pieces.

 

_“The lady, our earth, was once alone. Then her brother, the lord, our sky, appeared out of the abyss before her. The lady saw that her brother was all that might complete her and bore a form she could not help but desire. Knowing there was no other to be her equal, our lady took her brother as her love and husband, and from their union, the stars above were born.”_

Gretel would have sworn that hours passed as she started at that one page, the words sinking within her.

 

A brother… a lover. How could they not be both to her? Who else had ever been there to complete and meet her as an equal?

 

A nameless and terrifying longing finally let itself be recognized within her, easing out from the darkest part of her heart where she’d long ago locked it away out of fear and shame. Gretel could not lose her Hansel, and so had not dared to speak of the desire that had been her constant companion for years.

 

In the world they had wandered, the villages and towns they entered, no man could be both a brother and a lover to the same woman. It was sin of the darkest sort, and she had seen such sinners stoned and cursed even more vilely than some of the witches she had hunted.

 

But now she wondered. What if?  What if such a love was a part of their destiny? A legacy of the magic in their blood, a hidden heritage only few might ever awaken to?

 

Why else might her mother have chosen that story in particular to grace the very cover of her most precious book?

 

Gretel did not know the answer, nor could she begin to guess at how to ask her brother if he’d ever felt the same longing for completion.

 

They might have continued on in silence and secrets for the rest of their lives as Gretel struggled against her fear if not for Hansel, himself.

 

It was Hansel who took the grimoire from her hands late one night while their apprentice and troll-servant slept in the room next to theirs. It was Hansel who softly read aloud the words on the back cover. His hands were trembling, but his voice never faltered. He finished reading and then carefully set it aside. And then it was Hansel who dared to lean in and kiss his sister.

 

It was always Hansel.


End file.
